Somethin’ ’bout sound
Repeatin’ in degree
A voice not mine
Singin’ as a we.
You call it boundry conditions
But don’t put your bounds on me.
Is there more to a ballad
Than weave and dodge and stall?
Some folks say it’s a cokehead’s ball
Some say a cure for all.
We’ve heard it from a nutbrown maid
And from a fellow who every day
Takes the blues from Ghent to Aix.
Some say ballad’s a slow romantic croon
Others an unsophisticated, moralizin’ folk tune
Neither epic nor lyric
A singable narrative atmospheric
Riddled with discontinuity
Usually endin’ in catastrophe.
Bullets have been dancin’ farther back than we can see.
Greeks first cast ballots in 423 BCE.
English ballads been ’round since 13th century.
Blatant rhythm alleges its decree
Fluid dynamics
If you want a God damn creed.
You call it boundary conditions
But don’t put no shame on me.
Fuck your lyric framin’
Fuck your depth of feel
If you’re not willin’ to sing along
Your messin’ with the deal.
Is this just an excuse for doggerel?
Resurrectin’ a long-outdated mode?
Solidarity is a lonely road
That begins at the inaugural.
Don’t call it boundary conditions
When you put your pain on me.
A little bit south of here, in Washington, D.C.
Next week’s gonna get a whiff of Armageddon
Billionaire racist takin’ over
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Not to mention the Pentagon too.
Wait and see, he’s gonna make the earth
His own private barbeque.
Winner of unpopular vote, FBI’s man
Armed and dangerous with his clan
Got the nuclear codes in his hands
(Nuclear codes in his hands.)
This ballad cannot fix or change
The course of our collective pain
Even makin’ the lyrics strange
Is no guarantee of liberty.
But closer to here than Washington
Is Camden, New Jersey
Home of Walt Whitman
Molderin’ in his grave, you bet
Lilacs wiltin’ on the dooryard
Of these Benighted States.
We raised ourselves on the left
Only to get socked by the right
It’s not rocket mechanics
What we’ve got to do is fight.
I used to have a boarder
Till I kicked that boarder out.
I came down to Philadelph-i-a
On an Amtrak train
When I finish with this job
Goin’ straight back to Brook-o-lyn.
The 2016 ballot was stolen
With mirrors and smoke.
The mediocracy, virally swollen
Couldn’t resist a con man’s joke.
Watch as castles made of sand
Become law of the land.
We all know about voter suppression
Twitterin’ lies in endless succession.
The ballot’s in danger, that’s the dope.
But, say?, did you even vote?
The danger that we face
Is not capitalism versus race
But race as capitalism’s sword
To vanquish our fight for all.
What’s to be done?
What’s to be undone?
The ying’s not in the yang.
The pang has lost its ping.
Turns out the ballad’s no place to be
For a self-respectin’ poet like me.
At this MLA convention
The crisis of greatest dimension
Is our jobs goin’ down the tubes
Like we are just a bunch of rubes.
We old-time full timers gettin’ replaced
With terrific young scholars
Doin’ the same work for half the dollars
Teachin’ students crippled by debts
In the clutches of banker’s threats
Regardless of our attitudes to Palestinian or Jew
Enrollments are divin’ like flies into glue.
Call it border conditions
But when he stiffed us on the rent
We booted the boundary out.
Neo-illiberalism’s on the rise
Provokin’ all to despise
Scorn, resist, chastise.
But a word to the wise ––
Illiberality comes in every guise.
Free speech may be a barrel of bare-knuckle lies
Mixed with a soupcon of truths gonna die.
But bein’ trigger happy about what can be taught
Will never liberate thought.
To offend or not is not the question.
Neither is transgression, repression, nor discretion.
(Though never underestimate digression.)
These days I keep thinkin’
We ought to boycott ourselves.
This isn’t a poem about politics
About which I don’t have a clue.
It’s a poem about a form
That sputters and cranks, is mortally torn.
Between here and there’s a boundary
I almost found it yesterday
One day I hope to cross it
If history don’t get in my way.
Is there more to a ballad
Than formula and rhyme?
A whiff of a story
Told with in the nick of time?
If there’s more to it than that, my friends
I sure as hell can’t say.
You call it boundary conditions
But I’m not in the mood to stay.
There is no freedom without constraint.
No border that’s not a wall.
Good fences sell for 99.99.
Even cheaper on Amazon.
There once was a little ballad
That didn’t know its name
Didn’t know it’s pedigree
Didn’t know its taint.
This ballad got mixed up in a robbery
And though it wasn’t in the plans
Ended up with blood on its metaphorical hands.
The verdict came down swift as a slap:
100 years for stupefaction
150 for personification.
But with parole it will only be
A matter of time before we see
Langue and all that rigmarole
Back on the streets
Purveyin’ an aesthetic trap.
There is no moral to this ballad
But, hey!, don’t forget:
Our jobs goin’ down the tubes
Quicker than an Xpress Lube.
We old-timers gettin’ replaced
With super young scholars
Doin’ same work for half the dollars
Teachin’ students with loans to pay
Turn ‘em into big banks’ prey.
Graduate students: unionize!
Don’t let yourselves be patronized!
Let’s turn over half of bloated university president wages
To tenure-track jobs to counter adjunct rages.
Call it border conditions if you like.
Or call it a struggle for a better life.
Dylan’ got one of those Nobel Prizes
Unsung poets put on more disguises.
Nobels to superstars and pamphleteers!
Not for impecunious balladeers!
If songwriters are poets, poets write songs
A Grammy for Baraka woulda righted many wrongs.
For next year’s Nobel we expect to see
(Havin’ shown class strife as metonymy)
Jean-Luc Goddard tapped for economy ––
The Rollin’ Stones for biology.
As for the Peace Prize, which Norway grants
How ’bout Lillyhammer’s Steven Van Zandt?
A ballot says, this is what we want.
A bullet does that too.
A ballad’s just lousy fantasy
Goin’ out from an us to a youse.
I ha been to the wild wood; mak my bed soon;
I’m wearied wi hunting, and fain wad lie doun.
Oh, yes, I am poisoned; mak my bed soon
I’m sick at the heart, and fain wad lie doun.
Now at end
Of what to tell
Hailin’ you, friend!
Between us dwell!
I came down to Philadelph-i-a
On the Amtrak train
When I finish with this job
Goin’ straight back to Brook-o-lyn.
A ballet’s not a bullet.
A ballot’s no balloon.
But when you add up all we’ve lost
You’ll soon be sighin’ this rune.
Call it boundary conditions if you like
Or call it a struggle for a better life.
Charles Bernstein
First presented at “Boundary Conditions of the Ballad,” at the MLA Annual Convention, Philadelphia, January 6, 2017. (“Boundary conditions” was the theme of the convention).
In the Moment 
I wish I could have heard this ballad read live at the MLA, but I was too busy listening to debates about boycotting Israeli academics and injustice on the West Bank. Damn, I wanted to talk about the injustice I encountered in the Starbucks line at the Marriott hotel – underpaid, overworked young scholars, indentured labor who would never have the luxury to do research and publish with their teaching loads of 5/4. And who still came to the MLA hoping to reconnect with the ideas and people they had imagined they would build their careers around. Meanwhile, back in the Delegate Assembly we were listening to impassioned calls for the MLA to have the courage to take a political stand. Political? What about the imploding politics of our profession? End of rant.